I return to the subject of money and football. I outlined some milestones in this piece from 2022. It was mainly about Kylian Mbappé, a player you will probably have heard of even if you do not follow football closely. He won the World Cup with France in 2018 and is about to join Real Madrid on a free transfer this summer. As the title of my earlier piece suggests (“£157m for one player for one year”), PSG essentially valued his services for a single season at £157m, the combined amount of a transfer offer from Madrid (which PSG turned down) and Mbappé’s wages.

But have you heard of Jean-Kevin Augustin? Unless you follow Leeds United, or the workings of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), his name may well be unfamiliar to you. And, as a Leeds United fan myself, I still can’t believe quite how much money he has cost the club after he was signed on loan in 2020. He played for a total of 48 minutes, without being signed permanently, and it looks like it has cost United £40m.

This piece from April 2023, from the BBC website, explains how it happened. I would try to summarize it but I’m shaking my head too much at the numbers: £833,000 for every minute (or £13,883 for every second) that Augustin played for Leeds. Check out that BBC piece for the details. I really can’t talk about it right now.